Rule 5
by rosesinjanuary
Summary: "You don't waste good."  Begun post-"Pyramid"; non-canon from there.
1. Chapter 1

I promise, goal for the upcoming three day weekend is to finish "Here and Now," which I think I can do in two chapters. And to add more chapters to this. I swear!

My usual - not much plot, lots of character interaction, maybe a _teeny _touch of angst, and a happy ending. In my head, this takes place in the same universe as "Not You." I may even reference it at some point. You don't _have _to read that for this to make sense...but I mean really, guys, it's two parts. It won't take you long. And you'll probably like it. ;-)

Lyrics here and those that will appear at the very end from "To Make You Feel My Love," Adele's version, which I've been listening to pretty much on repeat while writing this (thanks, _Bones)._ Also on my writing playlist: "Never Gonna Leave This Bed," Maroon 5.

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><p><em>I know you haven't made your mind up yet<em>

_But I will never do you wrong_

_I've known it from the moment that we met_

_No doubt in my mind where you belong_

* * *

><p>"Can I stay with you tonight?"<p>

They'd buried Mike Franks today. And she'd visited Cade in the hospital this morning. Abby was exhausted, and wanted nothing more than to go home and not think.

Or rather, to go to McGee's and not think.

Ever since Cobb, she'd felt better when he was around. He sensed it, or maybe he felt better around her too, because he kept finding reasons to work down in her lab. Sometimes they talked – not about anything important, just regular stuff – sometimes they worked together, sometimes they were quiet. They were easier together than they'd been in a long time, and though she couldn't quite put her finger on why, it soothed her.

Fingers flexing on the wheel of his car, McGee hesitated, but only for a second. "Sure." They were leaving Ducky's townhouse, where they'd gathered after the funeral. "You need anything from your place?"

"No." Abby watched the people and buildings go by outside the window. Even the thought of stopping at her apartment and getting pajamas made her tired. It wasn't like she ever slept really well, but the past few nights had been especially bad, with dreams waking her up every hour or so. "As long as I can borrow a shirt or something to sleep in."

"Sure."

It felt good, to be going home with him. Abby leaned her head back against the headrest and let herself be lulled by the motion of the car.

#

When they got to his apartment, McGee took the dog out for a walk. "Take anything you need," he told her, nodding towards the bureau in his room, and then left her alone.

The light was fading as she wandered around the space. They'd stayed at Ducky's for a long time, telling Leyla and Emira stories about Franks, and hearing few new ones from them. Remembering, the way you were supposed to at funerals.

Mostly McGee's apartment was the same. A few more books on the shelves; a new computer monitor. A new bedspread, navy and white striped. Same monkey shower curtain, which made her smile.

Abby dug through his drawers and pulled out a pair of plaid boxers and an old Johns Hopkins t shirt. She changed and carefully hung up her dress, and finally, gratefully, crawled into McGee's bed.

The pillows smelled like him. Abby scooted to one side to make sure he had enough room.

She was already dozing when he came in. When she heard him pause in the doorway, she wondered if he'd have a problem with her choice of sleeping arrangements. But he didn't say anything; just grabbed some clothes from the dresser and went into the bathroom.

A few minutes later he slid into bed beside her. "Night Abs," he said softly.

It should have been weird, she supposed. But it wasn't. She reached out and found his hand in the dark.

"Night, McGee."

#

She half-woke curled against him, her head on his chest, her legs tangled with his, his arm around her waist. Warm and comfortable and rested, after the first full night's sleep she'd had in nearly forever.

It was the most natural thing in the world to angle her head just a little, just enough to place a light kiss on the underside of his jaw.

Early morning skin, sweet and soft with the barest prickle of stubble against her lips. One more kiss was pretty much a given…

Abby wondered vaguely if she were still asleep and dreaming, and decided that she was the minute she felt McGee's mouth on hers, hungry and possessive. He was holding her tight, and she also decided that this was one of her better dreams, possibly the best in recent memory.

As she shifted her position slightly, she accidentally elbowed him in the ribs. She could tell the second he went from mostly asleep to all the way awake – the kiss ended and his hands were off her so fast it was as if she'd suddenly turned radioactive.

They blinked at each other, both a little dazed. "Um. Hi," said McGee.

"Hi." Abby was still wound around him and half on top of him, and the ridiculousness of the situation did not escape her. She started to smile.

McGee wasn't smiling. Instead, he looked guilty and semi-embarrassed. "Sorry. I…was dreaming." He started to push away, but she wouldn't let him.

"Me too." His neck was just _there,_ and she just happened to know that it was one of his weak spots, so she brushed her lips against his skin. "Wanna tell me what yours was about?"

He tried again to extricate himself from their tangle, and again she wouldn't let go. Though it didn't feel like he was trying very hard. "Abby," he groaned, sounding annoyed. "I only have so much self-control."

Good, so she was getting to him. "Funny, I don't remember asking you to have _any."_ A few more kisses, trailing up his neck, and she landed one right at the corner of his mouth. Because it had been a very, verygood not-dream, and it just felt _right._ "C'mon, tell me what you were dreaming."

Gradually, she felt him relax beneath her, and knew that she was winning. Under the covers, he curled his fingers around the back of her knee where her leg lay across his. "I was dreaming about that spot," he said, his voice quiet and still a little uncertain.

"Mmmm." She wondered if he still did that – there, _that _thing, where he wouldn't meet her eyes for a minute, and then would slowly steal a glance at her, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. There was something about that expression that just melted her. "And then?"

He ran his hand along her leg, with a bit more of that smile. "There was some of that."

His touch sent happy shivers up her spine. "Your subconscious has a thing for my legs."

McGee gave a snort of laughter. "Any straight male with a pulse has a thing for your legs," he informed her, tracing random patterns on the appendage in question.

She kissed his ear. "Not the point. We were discussing you."

"True." He removed his hand from her leg with some reluctance – both his and hers – and then slid both hands up under her shirt, across her back. "My subconscious has a thing for your back, too," he admitted.

And there was the other thing that got her about him, every time. There was nothing calculated about him, no attempt to be smooth. Just that openness and honesty that pulled her in and made her want to stay in his arms as long as he'd let her. "It's the tattoo," she guessed. "The tattoo always got you."

"Yeah," he said slowly, smiling. "That and this curve, here." He traced the line of her hip, moved up along her spine. "And then this part, right here…" His hands stopped, resting on her sides, just under her breasts. "And then," he said with a sigh, his breath warm on her temple, "I woke up."

Abby propped herself up on her elbows so that she was looking down at him, her hair falling around them and closing them into small, private world. "I like your dreams," she told him softly. "Tell me what happens next."

McGee touched his lips to hers and then hesitated, just barely.

She smiled. "Kiss me, Timothy."

And he did.


	2. Chapter 2

They were working in her lab, acting ridiculously normal. The only thing that anyone might have considered slightly odd was that Abby was voluntarily sharing her Caf-Pow with him…and even that wasn't totally unheard of.

There was a question hovering at the tip of his tongue. Well, more of a comment really, and he was still trying to gauge her mood, debating whether it was safe. He'd bitten it back three or four times already, but finally he couldn't stand it.

"So…" McGee said, striving for a casual tone. Judging by Abby's raised eyebrow he had, as usual, failed miserably. "You gave Cade a ride here from the hospital this morning?"

A slight smile, instead of an annoyed sigh. Well, at least that meant she wasn't feeling irritable. "Yeah, I did. I'd promised him." She appeared to ponder her next words for a couple of minutes. "He asked if I'd come visit him in Washington."

His instinct was to be outraged, and he even let out the beginnings of a stammered objection before he caught the smirk at the corner of her mouth and realized what she was doing. "You're trying to make me jealous."

The smirk grew into a full-on smile. "Maybe a little," she admitted, watching him out of the corner of her eye. "How am I doing?"

The thought of Cade in combination with the memory of Abby in his bed – _his, _not Cade's, he reminded himself – yesterday morning was enough to make him more than a little jealous. "I can't decide if I'm more pissed at you for trying to make me jealous or flattered that you _want _me to be jealous." Irritated, he turned back to his computer, and tried to focus on peeling away the next layer of encryption from the file he was working on. For a while the only sounds in the room were the clicking of computer keys and the beat of Abby's music.

Eventually he couldn't take it anymore. "Okay, fine, what did you tell him?" he demanded, looking over at her.

Abby laughed, and turned to face him. "I told him no, McGee." Their eyes met, and he couldn't help smiling. Then they both started to talk at once. "Do you –" Abby began.

"Have di –" he started to say, and then they both stopped. "Go ahead," he told her.

Abby shook her head. "No, you can go," she said eagerly.

It reminded him of the first time they'd fought, when they'd both tried to apologize at once and she was so relieved when she could let him go ahead. He wondered what would happen if he tried to make her speak first, and decided that today was not the day he wanted to find out, because he still wasn't at all sure what this was.

"Have dinner with me," he said quietly, watching her face, trying to track her response. "Have dinner with me –" a beat, because yesterday could have been a fluke, but this would be very much on purpose "– and then come home with me." He practically held his breath waiting for her answer.

Abby smiled in that way she had that lit up her whole face, and it sparked another memory, this one of the first time he'd managed to ask her out on a real date, after what felt like an eternity of stammering and stuttering. And she answered the same way she had then. "I thought you'd never ask." Her hand was resting next to his on the desk, and she turned it palm up and slid it under his, lacing their fingers together. "I'd like that."

They sat like that, just smiling at one another, until the 'ding' of the elevator announced that they were about to have company. They pulled their hands apart and turned back to their computers, but they didn't stop smiling.

#

Much later, they lay facing one another in his bed. Abby was toying idly with his fingers, and he'd draped his other arm over her waist and was re-memorizing the feel of her skin and the way her hair tickled his shoulder as she shifted closer. "I think this counts as a major violation of Rule 12," she said lazily.

It really did, and thought of Tony ragging on him and Gibbs looking disapproving was possibly the most unappealing thought he'd had lately. McGee shrugged. "What they don't know won't hurt them."

Her eyebrows shot up. "What, keep it a secret? We're like, the two worst liars _ever, _McGee."

"Not really. Just…not mention it." He couldn't tell if she thought it was a good idea or not. At the back of his mind was the realization that they were both talking about this like it wasn't a one – well, two now – time thing, like it was going to keep happening. "It's not actually lying."

"Just lying by omission," Abby said with a grin. "Which, while bad in a murder investigation…probably isn't so bad when you're trying to keep your personal life private at work."

He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "It's none of their business anyway."

"Nope," she agreed, and scooted even closer. "None at all."

He kept waiting for an awkward moment, for all of it to fall apart, and both of them to realize that they were doing something crazy. But as Abby slid further into his embrace and kissed him, he stopped waiting. Because why wait for something bad when something so good was already happening?


	3. Chapter 3

Yes, Abby and McGee are having a lot of sex in this story. I figure they're due. ;-P

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><p>"It's <em>weird."<em>

They'd been…whatever they were (dating sounded too cute, sleeping together sounded too impersonal, and she had yet to come up with a better term) for only a couple of weeks, and were still in the mildly crazy stage where they couldn't keep their hands off one another.

Not that they tried much, outside of work.

"What's weird?" McGee asked absently, obviously more focused on getting her necklace off. Anything with spikes, hooks, or potential for stabbing was generally his first priority. It was mildly annoying – what did he think she was going to do, slice him open with one of her cuffs? Okay, there'd been that _one _time, back when they were first together, but it had barely broken the skin – but also kind of endearing, since it was so stereotypically McGee. Safety first, even when they'd been more than ready to jump one another the second the door to her apartment closed.

"You," she said, working on his shirt buttons while he disentangled the clasp on the inch-long silver fang she'd been wearing all day. He frowned as he dropped the necklace on the table next to them, and she laughed. "Not _you,"_ she elaborated, leaning in to kiss his neck as he began on the braids in her hair. "_This."_ She poked him in the stomach. "I mean, obviously we've had sex before."

"Obviously," he said dryly. He ran his fingers through her now-loose hair and then tugged at the hem of her t-shirt, and she stopped with his buttons long enough for him to pull it over her head. He slid his hands across her back, tracing the edges of her bra and the lines of her cross tattoo and they were both sidetracked for a minute. "You were saying?" he asked eventually, moving to the buckles on her plaid kilt.

Attempting to hold a conversation while they undressed one another was distracting, but Abby liked a challenge. "Being with you is…it's not the same, because it's been a long time, but I know you. I know how we are together," she tried to explain, finally dealing with the last of his buttons and pushing his shirt off his shoulders. She stepped closer and slid her arms around him, enjoying that first electric thrill at the feel of his skin against hers. "But your body is completely different. So it's kind of like having sex with someone who's had one of those brain transplants, like in the _Twilight Zone _or something."

McGee stopped kissing her shoulder and leaned back against the wall of her bedroom to stare at her. "You are probably the only person in the entire world, possibly the universe, who would come up with that comparison," he informed her.

His hands had stilled on her hips, so she undid the last buckle on her kilt herself and dumped it on top of his shirt. "Well, I'm the only person who's had sex with you two separate times in a seven year period." It had been more than thirty seconds since he last kissed her, which she decided was a problem, so she rectified the situation. Then a thought occurred to her, and she pulled back for a second. "That I know of," she added, narrowing her eyes at him suspiciously.

McGee rolled his eyes. "Yes," he confirmed, kissing her again. "You would definitely be the only one." A fact which pleased her. "So," he said between kisses, sounding a bit uncertain, "is it good weird, or bad weird?"

Part of her kind of missed what she thought of as the teddy bear version of McGee…but she knew _he _didn't, and this version wasn't exactly a letdown. Abby leaned into him, pressing her lips to his collarbone and feeling the way their bodies fit together – familiar in a way, but not, because even though she'd hugged him hundreds of times over the years, this was different. "I don't think it's either," she said thoughtfully. "We were always good together." She brushed her fingers along his ribs, and from his slight flinch and the moment of suppressed laughter determined that he was still ticklish there, which was good to know. "We're still good together." He smiled at that and kissed her deeply, and her hands, usually so steady, fumbled and slipped on his belt buckle for a moment. "It's just different is all," she said, breathless.

She turned, tugging at his arm, and started to pull him away from their discarded clothes and towards her coffin. But he caught her from behind and pulled her back against him, wrapping his arms around her waist. He brushed her hair to one side and kissed the spider web on her neck, and there was no reason a little sweet moment like that should make her go all soft inside, or weak at the knees. Because this was McGee, and she saw him every day and it wasn't like they'd never slept together before – as she'd pointed out – and she'd known him forever.

But it did. So much so that when she tried to take a step forward, she tripped and took McGee down with her. Fortunately they landed on her rug, the one McGee had told her several times looked like she'd gone out and skinned a Goth Muppet. At least it was soft enough to break their fall, though between the landing and their laughter, the wind was knocked out of them.

"You're just the same," he told her when they'd gotten their breath back. Which was either flattery or the result of him looking at her while blinded by sex – even though seven years didn't show as much on her as they did on him, they did show a _little – _but was still nice to hear. "You are still," he brushed his lips across the top of her breast, just where black lace faded into white skin, "like some sort of dream girl come to life."

Abby snorted. "Liar. You like blondes. With the occasional redhead." Not that she would ever admit that it stung a little whenever she saw him go all glassy-eyed over one of those girls who was basically the antithesis of her.

"The blondes don't like my job, or at least the hours, and the redheads tend to be trying to kill me," McGee reminded her. Now she wished she'd just taken the compliment, because she hated it when he looked sad. She kissed him – the best distraction she knew – and was happy to see him smile again. "I like _you,"_ he said, and there it was again, that sweetness that always caught her a bit off-guard, though it shouldn't.

Abby wound her arms around his neck. "I like you, too," she told him, and then they didn't talk again for a while.

#

"Stay," she mumbled sleepily, when she felt him getting up to leave.

They'd rarely spent the night together the last time – a couple times when McGee was still living up in Norfolk and needed a place to stay, but hardly ever – since she usually preferred her own space. But more and more she wanted to stay with him, or have him stay with her. There was something comforting about reaching out and knowing that he would be there.

And because she'd asked, McGee lay back down with her and stayed, even though it meant getting up ridiculously early to go back to his place and get ready for work. They slept snuggled together in her coffin, nearly guaranteed to give him a backache, but to him, it was apparently worth the pain, and to her, it was worth listening to him complain about it.


	4. Chapter 4

McGee couldn't pinpoint the moment that he fell back in love with her. He wasn't even sure, now, that he'd ever fallen out of love with her in the first place. But he knew the moment he realized it.

It was an ordinary day, and they were explaining a piece of computer-related evidence to Gibbs. One of those really great moments where they were completely in sync, finishing each other's sentences, and of course Gibbs interrupted them about halfway through their explanation, demanding the bottom line, and Abby glanced over at him and rolled her eyes with a smirk before turning back to Gibbs and giving him their final conclusion.

A perfectly ordinary moment, one that could have happened as easily a year ago as it had just then. But when she smiled, his heart gave one hard, almost painful lurch that almost took his breath away, and he realized that all of this was more than just his complete inability to say no to her, or the two of them enjoying the moment, or burning off steam, or taking comfort in one another after a rough year. If one little moment like that could stop him in his tracks, then he was pretty far gone.

Abby kicked his foot lightly, and he realized that he'd left a break in their previously seamless delivery of information to Gibbs. It couldn't have been too long, because Gibbs was just looking at him with a slight frown rather than slapping him upside the head, and he quickly picked up the thread again.

But that moment of realization stayed with him.

#

It stayed with him, and he turned it over in his head, examining it from all angles, prodding at it, flipping it upside down and around and over until he was, if not comfortable with the idea, at least used to it.

It should scare him. That was the problem. It should scare him, and it didn't, and he couldn't figure out why. Not being in love; that wasn't scary. Rather, being in love with _Abby._ That's the part that should have been scary. Because he'd been here before, and while in some ways one could argue that it had ended relatively well – they'd stayed friends, and in a great way, not the usual way you stay friends with exes, where you try for a while and then drift apart – it had still ended. He hadn't wanted it to end last time, and he didn't want it to end this time. What was that definition of stupidity again? Doing the same thing over again and expecting different results? Or maybe it was insanity. Same thing.

He lay awake one night, Abby asleep beside him, and tried to figure out if they were just repeating their previous insanity, or if there were something different that wasn't immediately obvious.

They didn't argue any less than last time. They actually argued _more, _but it wasn't a problem – it was just the same stuff they'd been arguing about for the entire time they'd known each other. Who was right at any given moment, who was being more reasonable, who was acting more like an idiot...mostly who was right. And then one of them was proven right, and the other one sulked for a minute, and then they made up. Like always. So that wasn't it.

They did a lot of the same things. Went to dinner, played computer games. He had Jethro now, so they took him to the dog park sometimes. When she made the effort to be particularly persuasive, he'd go to a concert with her. Last week she'd taken him bowling with the nuns. They had fun together, just like they always had.

He looked over at Abby's sleeping back. _That _was different. Well, not Abby sleeping. Not that people saw her do it very often, but the general consensus was that she had to sleep some time. But Abby sleeping in his bed…that was different. The last time, no matter how late it was, she'd always gone home, or teasingly nudged him out the door if they were at her place. Now she stayed with him – or he stayed with her, which should have been another clue that he was in love with her, since that coffin was not exactly spacious with two of them in it – more and more often. It was different, but he wasn't sure what it meant. That she trusted him more? That she loved him this time? Not that she hadn't loved him, or didn't love him, but that she loved him differently. More. Better. Enough.

She still never left anything of hers at his place, though. A toothbrush; that was all. And she never suggested that he leave anything of his with her. He didn't know what that meant either. But _she _was here, and that was something, at least.

He was different too. He must be, because this time, his overwhelming feeling was not of disbelief that she would want to be with him. It still hit occasionally, and he knew it always would, to some extent. As long as they were together, he knew every once in a while he would look over at her and wonder how on earth he could have gotten so impossibly lucky. But mostly, this time, he just felt that it was right. Completely right, that she should be here, and that they should be together.

Maybe she felt it too, and that's why she was here, asleep in his bed in one of his old t shirts. He'd asked her once if she owned any pajamas of her own, and she'd just smiled – since they both knew he liked it when she borrowed his clothes.

McGee reached over and ran his knuckle lightly along her arm. Abby sighed and rolled over, and in the dim light from the window, he saw her green eyes, sleepy but at least partly awake. "Hey," she said.

"Hey." He brushed her hair away from her face. "Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you up."

She smiled and shifted herself closer. "S'okay," she reassured him, tucking her head against his shoulder. _She's a hugger,_ he'd told Jackson Gibbs once, and she still was. Abby wrapped herself around him, her arm around his waist, her leg hooked across his. "You feel good," she sighed, and as he settled his own arm in its familiar position around her, he felt her breathing slow and knew that she was already drifting off again. She'd always claimed she never slept well, but he'd never noticed her having any trouble, not when he was with her.

She knew, just the way he did, even if she didn't know she knew yet. McGee kissed her forehead, finally able to relax his mind enough to sleep. He could be patient, he decided. He knew that this was right, and he knew he loved her, so he would be patient, and eventually she'd figure it out.


	5. Chapter 5

Wow, it has been over a year since I updated this. We've had an entire season since then! Obviously this is no longer canon, and generally I don't like writing out of canon...but I've never been able to get the last chapter of this out of my head. Still got a few chapters to go - maybe three? - but I'm going to try and get there. If you're still reading, thank you!

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><p>First there was a case, which led to a stakeout, which led to the two of them having crazy opposite schedules and barely seeing one another for two weeks, which led to her trying not to think about the fact that she missed him just a little bit more than she was really willing to admit, even to herself. And then the stakeout led to a suspect, which led to a group of suspects, and <em>that <em>led to a shootout, which she was very glad she didn't find out about until it was all over, because when she did, her hands shook so badly she could hardly type.

But she calmed herself down – though it took longer than it would have if McGee'd been in the lab with her, another thing she tried not to think about – and catalogued all the evidence, and very carefully and precisely shut down her lab for the night. And then she was standing at his door, knocking, and when he didn't answer, she tried her key. No safety chain, so she was able to let herself in.

Jethro greeted her with a cold nose in the palm of her hand. "McGee?" she called out, and then heard the shower running. She leaned down and kissed the dog between the ears, and then dropped her bag and her coat and headed for the bathroom. "McGee, you in there?"

"Yeah," he said eventually.

She stepped into the bathroom, which was full of steam. "You should put the chain on your door," she told him through the shower curtain.

"I hoped you'd be coming by."

Abby thought about that for a minute. "Okay." She stripped off her clothes and stepped into the shower with him. He was leaning against the wall, his head tipped back against the tile. She stepped in close and slid her arms around him, and after a minute, she felt his arms around her, too. "How was your day?" she asked after a while.

His shoulders twitched, and she couldn't tell if he was laughing or crying. "Well, I got shot at, I'd be in the hospital right now if it weren't for my vest, and I had to kill someone."

The bruise on his ribs was as big as her palm, and her hand was shaking again as she touched it. "So, not the best, then."

That time it was definitely a laugh, though not a particularly happy one. "Not really." He hugged her tight, and she squeezed him back carefully. "How was your day?"

"I processed some DNA from your case, and some from another team. I wondered what you were doing, and then I found out about the shooting and then I worried about all of you, and then you and I had three fights in my head – two to one, my favor –"

"Which one did I win?" he interrupted.

She thought back. "Whether you all should get different jobs that don't involve getting shot at. Usual argument about how if you guys did that, we wouldn't be a team any more. Anyway, then I worked through some computer files – it would have gone faster if you'd been there – worried some more, and somewhere in there I ate lunch and reorganized my ballistics testing equipment." The water was starting to go from hot to just warm, and she wondered how long he'd been in here. "Not my best day either."

He pressed his lips to the top of her head, then she felt his fingertips on her jaw, tipping her head back, and he was kissing her desperately. "Abby," he began.

"Shh…" She cut him off and kissed him back, her arms tight around his neck, bodies sliding against one another, his hands on her hips where his fingers dug in with almost bruising force. "Shh. You're here. I'm here. It's okay," she murmured between kisses.

"It's going to be okay."

#

Abby could feel his breathing, slow and even against the curve of her neck. His heartbeat was steady. They lay curved together like a pair of spoons. All of this usually put her to sleep almost immediately. But tonight she lay awake, lightly tracing the bones under his skin where his hand curled at her waist.

Thinking.

"I love you," she whispered at last, fiercely. She wrapped her hand around his, tight but not tight enough to wake him. "I love you so much."

And as she finally drifted off to sleep, she thought, _and now what?_


	6. Chapter 6

Dear NCIS: you've already wasted one McGee and Abby oppportunity this season. Let's not do that again. Okay?

* * *

><p>Something was up.<p>

Abby was not the most subtle person, nor the best at hiding her feelings. And he knew her _really _well. So it was very hard to not notice when she started…staring. Just watching him sometimes when he wasn't paying attention. On anyone but Abby it would have been creepy, but somehow on her it just seemed thoughtful instead. Like she was turning something over in her head, trying to figure out.

That didn't mean it never got annoying. "What?!" he burst out finally one day, when she'd been watching him out of the corner of her eye for what felt like hours. They were tracking financials in her lab – well, he was, at least. She seemed to be mostly watching him. "What is it?"

Her eyes snapped back to her computer screen, and she started typing again as though she'd never stopped. Though he wasn't entirely sure she was typing anything that made sense. "What are you talking about?"

"You have been staring at me for at least the past twenty minutes. You've been staring at me all _week._ Did I miss a spot shaving? Did you get lipstick on the collar of this shirt that didn't wash out? Do I need a haircut? What is it?"

She gave him her best wide-eyed innocent look, and her chin got that defensive angle that never boded well for their conversations. "You're imagining things, McGee."

When they were both younger, they would have gotten into a twenty-minute argument about who was imagining what. Thanks to age and experience, he was able to calculate the likely amount of time wasted on trying to get her to admit something she didn't want to admit and explain something she obviously wasn't willing to explain, and decide that they didn't have time for it today if they were going to get Gibbs results any time soon. "Fine. But please stop looking at me in a way that makes me imagine that you're staring at me. It's distracting."

Abby huffed out an irritated sigh. "It's not _my _fault you're imagining things," she muttered.

But he caught her staring at least a couple more times that day, and even though he knew it was futile speculation, he couldn't help wondering what was going on inside that head of hers.

#

Then there were the dreams.

She'd been unusually restless the last few nights, and once he'd even woken up to find her twitching in bed next to him, whimpering softly. He'd pulled her into his arms, rubbing her back gently, and she'd slowly relaxed, her breathing evening out as she fit herself to him in her sleep. Her head tucked up under his chin, her arm flung around his waist, her legs tangled with his. She wound herself around him until in his half-asleep state he couldn't tell where he ended and she began, and that seemed to soothe her.

And for that, he was grateful enough that he didn't ask any questions.

#

A few nights later, they were sleeping at her place, in her coffin, when he was startled awake by her jerking upright, her breath catching in sobs. "McGee," she gasped, and though he was barely awake he could hear the fear in her voice. "Tim…"

"I'm here," he said instantly, grabbing her hand. "Abby, I'm right here."

She sucked in a startled breath when he touched her, but it turned to a sigh of relief once she focused in on him lying next to her. In an instant, her hands were on his chest, pressing, searching for something. "Abby, what –"

"You're okay," she whispered, a bit of the tension leaving her. Her breath was still hitching in her chest, though, and her hands kept running over him, seeking. "You're all right."

That's when he realized where her trembling fingers were touching. The spot on his ribs where the bullet had hit his vest, still faintly bruised. And along under his collarbone, in a line down the center of his torso.

Where the ME would make the Y-incision.

"Abby, it's okay," he said softly, pulling her close. He took one of her hands and spread it flat over his heart, pressing it there where she could feel his heartbeat steady under her fingers. "It was just a dream. It wasn't real. Everything's fine. _I'm _fine." He cradled her against him, making soothing sounds, kissing her hair, listening as her long, shuddering breaths steadied.

He smoothed her tangled hair back away from her face, tucked it behind her ears, looking down at what he could see of her profile where it was tucked into his shoulder. She was, if possible, paler than usual, and still faintly trembling. "Abby…tell me what's wrong," he said finally, his voice gentle. "Tell me if there's anything I can do to fix it."

Abby stayed as she was for a long moment, her face mostly hidden, her body tense. At last, she lifted her eyes to his and released a breath he hadn't realized she'd been holding. "It's nothing," she told him. "Just a bad dream, one of the autopsy ones. It's over now." She blinked, and he saw that her eyes were just a bit shiny, but she gave him a hint of a smile. "And you're doing just fine."

Her mouth was on his, warm and soft and tasting of _her, _and even though he knew there was more going on in her head than she was telling him, if this was what she wanted, what she needed, this was what he would give her.


End file.
